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New Power-harvesting Equipment
ANEW type of machinery for power harvesting has been introduced by Ransomes, Sims and jefferies, Ltd., Ruston and Hornsby, Ltd., and Hosiers Inventions, Ltd., and is being tried out in this country.. The combination consists of a Hornsby tractor binder with an additional elevator in place. of the usual knotter, a motor sweep manufactured by Hosiers Inventions, Ltd., a Ransomes finishing thrashing machine, and a Ransomes grain dryer. The combination is intended to provide an alternative to the combined harvester-thrasher for . dealing with the corn crop in an equally expeditious manner.
The tractor-driven Hornsby binder does not tie the corn in sheaves. Instead, the corn is elevated, after cutting, from the platform to the top of the elevator canvas and thence on to a separate elevator equipped with windguards. When reaching the top of the elevator the corn drops on to the motor sweeps which run by the side of it.
The thrasher driven by a tractor is a Ransomes A type, 54 ins, wide, fitted with a second dressing shoe and corn screen. A side elevator is provided to receive the grain from the sweeps and to deliver it on to a self-feeder, which conveys it into the drum of the thrashing machine. The straw is baled by means of a baling machine. Only four men are required for the whole of the thrashing operation.
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After the grain is thrashed, it is dried in a Ransomes patent dryer situated at the farm buildings and is then ready for sale or storage.
With this new method the field is cleared as the grain reaper (binder) and sweeps travel along, no straw is left on the field, whilst the sample of grain delivered from the thrashing machine is the same as when thrashed in the usual way with an English-type of finishing and thrashing machine. One cannot, at this stage, estimate the saving in cost that the new process offers, but recent demonstrations were highly successful.
Excellent weather favoured the demonstration at Wexcombe, near
Hungerford, Wilts, and everything was carried out expeditiously. The only deviation from the ordinary manner of operating the outfit was that instead of the reaper dropping the cut grain on to the motor sweep travelling by its side, it was dropped on to the ground and collected by motor sweeps following the reaper
Three Lanz oil-engined agrimotors were engaged, one drawing the reaper, one driving the thrasher and the third driving the dryer. There was also a lorry hauling the thrashed grain from the field to the dryer at the farm.
It is claimed for this method that it ' will be more successful in dealing with crops in a wet season.